P1. Up until this point in my life, I saw money just as everyone else in the world. Money is what makes the world go round. This idea was never challenged until reading the various articles pertaining to this subject. I knew at one point gold was considered a precious gold that backed money. It’s value was created by humans in our minds, but the money still represented it. Now that it has been brought to my attention money is not backed by gold, my whole view has changed. Our money is not significantly different than the Yaps, Bitcoin, or Brazil’s made up currency.
P2. The gargantuan limestone boulders used as money in Yap sounded completely ludicrous to me. Money in my mind should always be able to be carried with you. The fact that there are gigantic pieces of money in their society baffled me, but once compared to our money in the U.S., my mindset began to skew from left to right. Our money can be represented through paper checks, plastic cards, and a special material we call bills. None of these are backed by gold. To make a comparison, Limestone is to Yaps as gold is to Americans. With this being the case, their idea of money is not too different from ours. They leave large pieces of limestone at different locations and use them as a bartering tool just as we use paper, plastic, and bills.
P3. America took the idea to make currency backed on nothing from Brazil. The way used to correct the inflation issue was in fact genius. Using the legitimacy of the country to back the currency was clever, because the government did not need to worry about finding gold or limestone, but rather just focus on amount of money being exchanged. This showed me that money can be backed by anything as long as that anything had value. A country is a great example such a thing of great value.
P4. Bitcoins still to this day do not make sense to me. It’s a made up currency not connected to any government or backed by gold. It is literally just a form of currency people agreed upon to barter created by an individual. For Places like Brazil or America to back their currency by their country made enough sense to not question it too much, but the thought that a legitimate form of currency could come from nothing with but an idea is insane. This simple fact helped me better understand that money does not have value due to the amount of it in the world, but rather what we believe it as.
P5. Money is for lack of a better phrase, a figment of our imaginations. It only has value because everyone wants it. If no one wanted money, everyone would barter using another item or items. Due to this fact, the concept of currency having value only because people want it, is very unsettling. Any boat that can be tipped that easily is not a good one and should be replaced.
Works Cited
Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.
“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.
Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil>.
Renaut, Anne . “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo.com. 13 Apr. 2013. 30 Jan. 2015. <https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html>.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
You’ve elected to “tell the story” of how your mind has changed about money, Princess272, and it’s probably getting in the way of your actual thesis.
As you know, you’ll receive quick grades in four grading criteria: Argument, Rhetoric, Mechanics, Scholarship (ARMS). Grades can always be improved by revision. To understand your grades, you need to know your Grade Code, which I will share with you in class MON SEP 19. I’ve numbered your paragraphs for easy identification. Additional feedback is always available upon request.
Argument (Grade N)— Your thesis is vague, Princess. We understand you now believe money to be a product of the imagination, but what was your earlier belief? The only clue you offer is that “money made the world go round.” But surely, that’s still true regardless of what you’ve learned this semester, right? Could you summarize in a sentence what you hope to prove, demonstrate, or persuade readers to believe? If so, get that idea clearly into your first paragraph.
If this is it: “Our money is not significantly different than the Yaps, Bitcoin, or Brazil’s made up currency,” the thesis is unclear. All money is “made up” when compared to bartering, which it replaces. As soon as I accept a coin of gold for my cow and use it to buy corn, I have accepted the “made up” value of the coin, which can’t be eaten. I could trade a cow for a sword because both have utility. But what is the utility of the coin (except as a made up symbol of a cow or a sword)?
In P2, your argument shifts and gets lost. It starts with the notion that money has to be carry-able. But your example of how your thinking changed is to notice that American currency can be carried. I don’t get it. While agree that limestone and gold are similar in their scarcity and supposed value, there were no coins or bills on Yap that “represented” limestone as American coins and bills used to represent gold. (So gold and limestone in our systems are very different.)
In P3, your claim that the US learned to back its currency on “nothing” from Brazil is historically inaccurate.
In P4, you conclude that money is valuable because of “what we believe it as.” This claim is where your paragraph should begin, not end. What is it that holders of Bitcoin believe it to be that makes the currency valuable?
P5 needs Cows or Chips, or Baseball Cards. What makes baseball cards valuable? You might answer “nothing” because you don’t desire them, but you might still be convinced to accept one as part of an inheritance, for example, instead of other property, if it had been appraised for $100,000. You want what you don’t want because you know other people want it.
Rhetoric (Grade N)
In P3 and elsewhere, Princess, you write as if all your readers are familiar with the source material. But that’s not true, ever, of essays written for global consumption. Imagine you have not read or heard the story of Brazil’s transition from the cruzeiro to the real. Would P3 make any sense to you at all? And once you’ve made the claim that “a country” is a thing of great value that can back a currency, can you explain why you believe that to be true?
Mechanics (Grade O)
—I’m not sure what this was supposed to say: “gold was considered a precious gold”
—Apostrophe Problems You Must Not Make: “It’s value was created . . . . ”
—Apostrophe Problems You Must Not Make: “not significantly different than the Yaps . . . .”
Scholarship (Grade N)— You have provided a Works Cited, Princess, which is the first step toward acknowledging your sources. Within the body of your essay, you must also identify what material came from which source.
For example:
The gargantuan limestone boulders Milton Friedman says the Yap used as money in “The Invention of Stone Money” sounded completely ludicrous to me.
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Revised cows and chips paragraph-
P5. Money only has value due to the fact that everyone wants it. Before people use to barter or trade fro things they wanted. An example of this is trading cattle for different herbs, spices, or supplies. Money however is a form of middle man. Humans give money value by merely stating it has value thus everyone chases after it. Instead of giving someone a cow for something of use, they give the cloth/ paper humans put value in to exchange for goods and services. An example of an item that has value much like money, but no practical use is collectible action figures. Since there is very few in good condition in the world left, many people want them which causes the price to rise. The demand is high, but the supply is low. Besides sitting on a shelf or selling them, these items are virtually useless with no practical use, much like money.
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You’ve improved your paragraph with cattle and herbs, but let me point out a few small improvables.
1. Money only has value due to the fact that everyone wants it.
“Due to” means “caused by,” so your sentence would read:
Money only has value caused by the fact that everyone wants it.
You’d probably agree that a better version would be:
Money only has value because everyone wants it.
2. Money only has value because everyone wants it.
“Only” modifies the word that follows it.
Your sentence, therefore, means: Money only has value. It can’t earn value, lose value, find value, etc.
You’d probably agree that a better version would be:
Money has value only because everyone wants it.
3. Before people use to barter or trade fro things they wanted.
The phrase for things often happened in the past is “used to.”
Your sentence, therefore, should be:
Before people used to barter or trade for things they wanted.
4. Before people used to barter or trade for things they wanted.
Your sentence needs a comma. If people used to barter at an earlier time, the comma follows Before:
Before, people used to barter or trade for things they wanted.
But since “used to” indicates clearly an earlier time, you’d probably agree a better version would be:
People used to barter or trade for things they wanted.
5. An example of this is trading cattle for different herbs, spices, or supplies.
Different from what?
An example of this is trading cattle for herbs, spices, or supplies.
6. Money however is a form of middle man.
When it interrupts a sentence, however is surrounded by commas.
Money, however, is a form of middle man.
7. Money, however, is a form of middle man.
Unless you’re going to distinguish between kinds or types or forms of middle man, you should avoid the words kind, and type, and form.
Money, however, is a middle man.
8. Humans give money value by merely stating it has value thus everyone chases after it.
Everyone chases after money because humans value it.
9. Instead of giving someone a cow for something of use, they give the cloth/ paper humans put value in to exchange for goods and services.
Instead of demanding a cow in return for something useful, humans accept the linen slips that can be exchanged for other goods and services.
10. An example of an item that has value much like money but no practical use, is a collectible action figure.
11. Their scarcity makes them valuable to people who want them, which causes the price to rise.
12. As long as demand is high and supply is low, they retain their value.
13. Much like money, these items are virtually useless except for selling.
You’ll have to explain how money is useless except for selling.
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Coded Grade for E02 Cows and Chips: M
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